Fark's a fast moving place, bub. Sometimes you just gotta go with your gut. I'm reminded of the time NDT said, "If you want to Fark a chicken, make sure it's under the stars, so you can feel so insignificant that it doesn't really matter, in the grand scheme of things, that you are farking a chicken."

He said this as a way of distancing himself from regular, daytime-behind-the-barn chicken farkers.

Jim_Callahan:Do you hold everyone in the entire universe responsible for memorizing every quote word-perfect with no paraphrasing? Because NDT ain't any kind of expert in that regard, he's on the same standards as the average guy.

No? But in a presentation, with quotes, where the speaker had time to prepare, and deliberately chose the sources they would use, yes, I expect a certain level of general academic rigor, like citing of sources, and those sources being real.

Or do you not think the "not meant to be a factual statement" Congressman was a-ok because he is neither a journalist nor a scientist?

You're loosing Tiger. He makes shiat up and claims to be a scientist and you guys throw out George Will. Other then baseball I missed where George Will claimed to know anything outside politics. Keep that echo chamber ringing!

Jim_Callahan:nmrsnr: I kind of do. It's lazy attribution to say "newspaper headline" and a scientist should cite his sources better.

You do realize that NDT doesn't purport to be a historian or a literary expert, right? He's a scientist, his ad-hoc conversational stories he tells to make rhetorical points aren't things he represents as being 100% rigorous in every detail without fail.

Do you hold everyone in the entire universe responsible for memorizing every quote word-perfect with no paraphrasing? Because NDT ain't any kind of expert in that regard, he's on the same standards as the average guy.

The thing I find most amusing about this is that the right is nitpicking NDGT, while completely ignoring the legion of shiat peddlers in the right wing media who blatantly lie and distort to prop up their political ideology, while consistently being wrong about pretty much everything.

So this dumbass writes an entire article concern trolling about how NDGT may not be credible because he got a few quotes wrong, but then in all likelihood Mr. Dumbass routinely turns to propaganda outlets like brietbart, drudge report, and fox for his news.

mgshamster:LucklessWonder: Karac: Forbidden Doughnut: Not getting some bible reference right ( Isiah vs Genesis, or something) is excessively nitpicky. (It would be like me getting upset at a Fundamentalist Christian for not having read anything by Voltaire ,Thomas Paine* , or the AD&D "Planescape" campaign sourcebooks )

/ esp. Paine's "The Age of Reason"; lots of things in that one to p*ss off fundamentalists of ALL stripes....

Now hold on a minute - everyone should read about Planescape. It is quite possibly the best setting for any game I've ever encountered.

I prefer Birthright and (whispers) DragonLance

I loved reading the birthright campaign setting; didn't enjoy playing it that much. Dragonlance always looked like it would be fun, but I never read any of the stuff because all my gamer friend growing up hated it. The only thing I ever read on it was when a planescape adventure delved into the dragonlance world.

I never had any gamer friends growing up, so I was stuck with just the books and computer games.My favorite games were the really old TSR gold box series, although the last Dragonlance one changed up the UI a pretty good bit (IIRC making it mouse-only) and so I only played it through the first fight.

I was mainly a Forgotten Realms geek. Dragonlance got too mixed up in time travel and universe shifting - it's like they looked at DC's eternal Crisis on However-many Earths massive retcons and decided that was the way to go. Greyhawk was fairly interesting, but it had mostly died out by the time I got around to it - although I remember loving the first Gord book by Gygax.

Now, the Dark Sun books - those were excellent. Good stories, no massive inconsistencies between authors, and a really inventive settings. The Ravenlofts also had some good moments.

derpes_simplex:Clearly you both have never heard of the placebo effect; it is directly correlated with belief. This is the same dynamic that makes people think the article they've just read is journalism.

Interestingly, scientists are beginning to unpick the mechanisms behind the placebo effect. It turns out that people are not merely "perceiving" or reporting lower pain; their brains are actually producing the hormones associated with pain reduction.

There's also an inverse-placebo effect where people who believe that something will hurt more than it does generate the appropriate pain/stress hormones.

The brain is an amazing organ; in fact, I think it's my second-favorite organ.

Elegy:joshiz: Great strategy: if you don't like the overarching ideas, just get extremely petty and nitpicky in a pathetic attempt to discredit the person delivering them.

"The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it." -- Neil deGrasse Tyson

So even if he completely made up his allegories or anecdotes (which I highly doubt) so what? He is not presenting those as facts, just ways to illustrate his larger points - points which these people have no response to so they resort to just these kind of diversionary attacks.

Really? That's the attitude we're going with?

"Who cares about the proof, I like what he says so it's OK."

SCIENCE!

No, the attitude we're going with is "seeing the forest for the trees". Mr. Degrasse-Tyson misquoted Bush. BFD. The quote was really not the focus of the speech. It's stupid nitpicky bullshiat designed to distract from the matter at hand.

It's like when people get all huffy and say "Well, Sarah Palin never actually said she could see Russia from her house." No shiat, Sherlock. She said that living in a state that's close to Russia made her a foreign policy expert. The "I can see Russia from my house!" line was meant to mock her for that.

The issue isn't biblical literacy. It's making up quotes and sourcing them to researchable sources. If your going to make shiat up at least pick something people can't bing. This latest quote is so egregious that it blows my mind.

//I'm agnostic and one of the reasons I don't like him is how he used cosmos for her personal platform. Sagan's version is one of my favorite series of all time. But yeah I hate science and those people that don't believe in my god. Keep sucking thTyson dick

It was fantastic that he used Cosmos has his personal platform. Someone has to. Cosmos did a great job of showing what we know and how we came to know it. Part of that is the people who made discoveries, but the other part is the intellectual climate that allowed people to make those discoveries. It would be irresponsible of him as a science advocate to not take the opportunity to warn the general public about how that intellectual climate is endangered and how we could lose opportunities to make similar discoveries in the future.

NDGT is only "political" in the sense that someone has to push back against the hordes of shiat peddlers on the right that are out there constantly trying to make it appear that things like evolution and climate change are matters of serious dispute in the scientific community.

I love how the right wing media criticizes NDGT as "political," then turns around and spews nonsense about how scientists are an international cabal fabricating things like climate change just to get more grant money. The only reason the right wing resorts to that kind of bullshiat is to provide an excuse to justify the right wing's insanely irresponsible political position that we shouldn't do anything to address or mitigate climate change.

mgshamster:LucklessWonder: Karac: Forbidden Doughnut: Not getting some bible reference right ( Isiah vs Genesis, or something) is excessively nitpicky. (It would be like me getting upset at a Fundamentalist Christian for not having read anything by Voltaire ,Thomas Paine* , or the AD&D "Planescape" campaign sourcebooks )

/ esp. Paine's "The Age of Reason"; lots of things in that one to p*ss off fundamentalists of ALL stripes....

Now hold on a minute - everyone should read about Planescape. It is quite possibly the best setting for any game I've ever encountered.

I prefer Birthright and (whispers) DragonLance

I loved reading the birthright campaign setting; didn't enjoy playing it that much. Dragonlance always looked like it would be fun, but I never read any of the stuff because all my gamer friend growing up hated it. The only thing I ever read on it was when a planescape adventure delved into the dragonlance world.

Dragonlance was seriously the best. I loved those books, and I loved gaming in that setting.

To use the scientific method would mean that Sean Davis would have to listen to every Bush speech after 9/11 to provide evidence that NdGT's anecdote was false. Instead, he just found another later Bush speech where the quote was different and used that as "evidence".

I care about the proof which in this case means excluding all other Bush speeches after 9/11. That was not done at all.

s2s2s2:Fark's a fast moving place, bub. Sometimes you just gotta go with your gut. I'm reminded of the time NDT said, "If you want to Fark a chicken, make sure it's under the stars, so you can feel so insignificant that it doesn't really matter, in the grand scheme of things, that you are farking a chicken."

He said this as a way of distancing himself from regular, daytime-behind-the-barn chicken farkers.

If the duct tape holding the chicken together is the only thing keeping it alive, does it still really qualify as a chicken?

//I'm agnostic and one of the reasons I don't like him is how he used cosmos for her personal platform. Sagan's version is one of my favorite series of all time. But yeah I hate science and those people that don't believe in my god. Keep sucking thTyson dick

It was fantastic that he used Cosmos has his personal platform. Someone has to. Cosmos did a great job of showing what we know and how we came to know it. Part of that is the people who made discoveries, but the other part is the intellectual climate that allowed people to make those discoveries. It would be irresponsible of him as a science advocate to not take the opportunity to warn the general public about how that intellectual climate is endangered and how we could lose opportunities to make similar discoveries in the future.

Depends what you wanted out of it. I kind of wanted something like the original that taught people about science. Something that parents would be glad to show their kids. Something that could be shown in science classes at school. He didn't make that. He made junk aimed at how awful religion is. It is fine to bring up how religions (and more so politics) shaped science in the past, but he went a bit beyond that. I she bishop or whoever had claws/ the scientists always had youthful child like features then the scene would go noticeably darker when the bad church guys came in who were depicted as villians. I mean you can make a show about science or a show about how the church sucks. There is a bit of overlap but he went way too far and it hurt his product. More importantly it hurt his objective of spreading science. No one wants to explain to a five year old how their pastor isn't evil like the man on TV, but they would of liked him to see the science part.

You're loosing Tiger. He makes shiat up and claims to be a scientist and you guys throw out George Will. Other then baseball I missed where George Will claimed to know anything outside politics. Keep that echo chamber ringing!

HeartBurnKid:mgshamster: LucklessWonder: Karac: Forbidden Doughnut: Not getting some bible reference right ( Isiah vs Genesis, or something) is excessively nitpicky. (It would be like me getting upset at a Fundamentalist Christian for not having read anything by Voltaire ,Thomas Paine* , or the AD&D "Planescape" campaign sourcebooks )

/ esp. Paine's "The Age of Reason"; lots of things in that one to p*ss off fundamentalists of ALL stripes....

Now hold on a minute - everyone should read about Planescape. It is quite possibly the best setting for any game I've ever encountered.

I prefer Birthright and (whispers) DragonLance

I loved reading the birthright campaign setting; didn't enjoy playing it that much. Dragonlance always looked like it would be fun, but I never read any of the stuff because all my gamer friend growing up hated it. The only thing I ever read on it was when a planescape adventure delved into the dragonlance world.

Dragonlance was seriously the best. I loved those books, and I loved gaming in that setting.

You sound like a fan of Kender then... get your hands out of my pouches!

Jim_Callahan:nmrsnr: I kind of do. It's lazy attribution to say "newspaper headline" and a scientist should cite his sources better.

You do realize that NDT doesn't purport to be a historian or a literary expert, right? He's a scientist, his ad-hoc conversational stories he tells to make rhetorical points aren't things he represents as being 100% rigorous in every detail without fail.

Do you hold everyone in the entire universe responsible for memorizing every quote word-perfect with no paraphrasing? Because NDT ain't any kind of expert in that regard, he's on the same standards as the average guy.

This is the internet, the answer to that question is YES! sort of like when being asked if you are a god.

HeartBurnKid:mgshamster: LucklessWonder: Karac: Forbidden Doughnut: Not getting some bible reference right ( Isiah vs Genesis, or something) is excessively nitpicky. (It would be like me getting upset at a Fundamentalist Christian for not having read anything by Voltaire ,Thomas Paine* , or the AD&D "Planescape" campaign sourcebooks )

/ esp. Paine's "The Age of Reason"; lots of things in that one to p*ss off fundamentalists of ALL stripes....

Now hold on a minute - everyone should read about Planescape. It is quite possibly the best setting for any game I've ever encountered.

I prefer Birthright and (whispers) DragonLance

I loved reading the birthright campaign setting; didn't enjoy playing it that much. Dragonlance always looked like it would be fun, but I never read any of the stuff because all my gamer friend growing up hated it. The only thing I ever read on it was when a planescape adventure delved into the dragonlance world.

Dragonlance was seriously the best. I loved those books, and I loved gaming in that setting.

I want to get back into regular gaming. My current group meets every other week, with half the group cancelling even then, so the rest of us end up throwing something on the BBQ and watching a movie.

//I'm agnostic and one of the reasons I don't like him is how he used cosmos for her personal platform. Sagan's version is one of my favorite series of all time. But yeah I hate science and those people that don't believe in my god. Keep sucking thTyson dick

It was fantastic that he used Cosmos has his personal platform. Someone has to. Cosmos did a great job of showing what we know and how we came to know it. Part of that is the people who made discoveries, but the other part is the intellectual climate that allowed people to make those discoveries. It would be irresponsible of him as a science advocate to not take the opportunity to warn the general public about how that intellectual climate is endangered and how we could lose opportunities to make similar discoveries in the future.

Depends what you wanted out of it. I kind of wanted something like the original that taught people about science. Something that parents would be glad to show their kids. Something that could be shown in science classes at school. He didn't make that. He made junk aimed at how awful religion is. It is fine to bring up how religions (and more so politics) shaped science in the past, but he went a bit beyond that. I she bishop or whoever had claws/ the scientists always had youthful child like features then the scene would go noticeably darker when the bad church guys came in who were depicted as villians. I mean you can make a show about science or a show about how the church sucks. There is a bit of overlap but he went way too far and it hurt his product. More importantly it hurt his objective of spreading science. No one wants to explain to a five year old how their pastor isn't evil like the man on TV, but they would of liked him to see the science part.

Did we watch the same show? There were like four scenes in the entire series that you could construe as critical of religion- only if that means that "critiquing" religion is saying that being non-religious is a plausible alternative. Or stating the simple fact that the catholic church persecuted scientists. He could have even said that the church continues to persecute scientists, and would have had every right to, but didn't.

I'm religious myself and there was absolutely nothing offensive to me about the presentation. And it was far more focused on all of the things you wanted than what sounds like one scene you took out of context.

Karac:mgshamster: LucklessWonder: Karac: Forbidden Doughnut: Not getting some bible reference right ( Isiah vs Genesis, or something) is excessively nitpicky. (It would be like me getting upset at a Fundamentalist Christian for not having read anything by Voltaire ,Thomas Paine* , or the AD&D "Planescape" campaign sourcebooks )

/ esp. Paine's "The Age of Reason"; lots of things in that one to p*ss off fundamentalists of ALL stripes....

Now hold on a minute - everyone should read about Planescape. It is quite possibly the best setting for any game I've ever encountered.

I prefer Birthright and (whispers) DragonLance

I loved reading the birthright campaign setting; didn't enjoy playing it that much. Dragonlance always looked like it would be fun, but I never read any of the stuff because all my gamer friend growing up hated it. The only thing I ever read on it was when a planescape adventure delved into the dragonlance world.

I never had any gamer friends growing up, so I was stuck with just the books and computer games.My favorite games were the really old TSR gold box series, although the last Dragonlance one changed up the UI a pretty good bit (IIRC making it mouse-only) and so I only played it through the first fight.

I was mainly a Forgotten Realms geek. Dragonlance got too mixed up in time travel and universe shifting - it's like they looked at DC's eternal Crisis on However-many Earths massive retcons and decided that was the way to go. Greyhawk was fairly interesting, but it had mostly died out by the time I got around to it - although I remember loving the first Gord book by Gygax.

Now, the Dark Sun books - those were excellent. Good stories, no massive inconsistencies between authors, and a really inventive settings. The Ravenlofts also had some good moments.

I did enjoy a lot of the old computer games. Still do, as a matter of fact. And I completely agree about darksun and ravenloft!

//I'm agnostic and one of the reasons I don't like him is how he used cosmos for her personal platform. Sagan's version is one of my favorite series of all time. But yeah I hate science and those people that don't believe in my god. Keep sucking thTyson dick

It was fantastic that he used Cosmos has his personal platform. Someone has to. Cosmos did a great job of showing what we know and how we came to know it. Part of that is the people who made discoveries, but the other part is the intellectual climate that allowed people to make those discoveries. It would be irresponsible of him as a science advocate to not take the opportunity to warn the general public about how that intellectual climate is endangered and how we could lose opportunities to make similar discoveries in the future.

Depends what you wanted out of it. I kind of wanted something like the original that taught people about science. Something that parents would be glad to show their kids. Something that could be shown in science classes at school. He didn't make that. He made junk aimed at how awful religion is. It is fine to bring up how religions (and more so politics) shaped science in the past, but he went a bit beyond that. I she bishop or whoever had claws/ the scientists always had youthful child like features then the scene would go noticeably darker when the bad church guys came in who were depicted as villians. I mean you can make a show about science or a show about how the church sucks. There is a bit of overlap but he went way too far and it hurt his product. More importantly it hurt his objective of spreading science. No one wants to explain to a five year old how their pastor isn't evil like the man on TV, but they would of liked him to see the science part.

Did we watch th ...

The problem that right wingers have with the show's discussion of religion is that it gave an accurate history lesson about how many religions have historically been fearful of scientific discovery and have used religious dogma to suppress science throughout history.

The politically oriented christian conservatives don't like it when you point out that their efforts to have us suppress or ignore science today and substitute it with their religious ideas is the same kind of shiat.

NickelP:bestie1: It kind of seems like NGT has his own religion. This is the third time in one week that I've seen proof that he's full of shiat yet he's still the savior to so many people. The first two were the standard tripe that 8th grade science teachers make up. This one is a uniformed political tirade. Why do I not remember my college physics professors making these mistakes? Oh I guess they were just boring and didn't have political agendas.

He is a semi decent public speaker, who is atheist, and has a lot of visibility. The hardons a bunch of people have for him 'cause omg he is smart like me, he knows so much better than everyone else and he agrees with me so I'm smart too!' Is absurd

Shakin_Haitian:Bartman66: nmrsnr: MrBallou: Who cares whether NDT got the details right or not?

I kind of do. It's lazy attribution to say "newspaper headline" and a scientist should cite his sources better.

Does that have any bearing on the message? Not one whit.

I don't think that this that big of deal but I do agree that as a scientist you would think that he would have done better at getting the facts / details correct?

I didn't go too in depth with the article, but it looked like the author was quoting mining Tyson while he was giving an informal talk. It's pretty easy to get things a little wrong in that situation. In an article or a formal talk, yeah it's definitely valid criticism.

Exactly... we got the gist of it and I can understand it happening but too have it happen many times is kind of foolish especially when one is so INSANELY intelligent as he is. IT is political.. If someone who is more right wing leaning said this it would be brought up on the dem sites and farker's etc...In today's age of putting everything under a microscope so you can find fault while losing the overall message this is the norm. Sadly enough.

Hmmmm....Sean Davis, Co-FounderSean Davis is a co-founder of The Federalist and also serves as COO of Media Trackers, a non-profit government watchdog. He previously worked as an economic policy adviser to Gov. Rick Perry, as CFO of Daily Caller, and as chief investigator for Sen. Tom Coburn.

1. I think the word this moron author is looking for is incomprehension2. Not comprehending the Bible is similar to not comprehending your drunk uncle at a holiday part. Nothing of value is lost.

Are you really going to base your arguments against Tyson on the Bible?

Also.....

Author's quote: "First off, Bush never uttered the quote attributed to him by Tyson. He did, however, include a separate but similar phrase in a February 2003 speech immediately following the Columbia space shuttle disaster:

So he got the timing wrong and maybe a few minor details attacking the president? OH NOES

I'll have to look at the rest of the stuff after work, but this looks like a poorly written and extremely nitpicky hit piece.

It's too bad he couldn't look at every single member of Congress this hard.